Where are all these jobs?

[SecretVictoria]

Every time I open a forum on here, Reddit etc I keep seeing the phrases “It’s an employees market”, “Businesses are crying out for staff”, “Employers have to offer flexible options to keep decent staff”. However, this is not the reality whenever I look!

Are these WFH, flexible jobs just in London? As an example, the company I work for just posted a job that I think I could do and would enjoy, however it says location is head office. For reference, the last two years when they have posted jobs it has said ‘head office’/hybrid/WFH’ but no mention of that now.

I have a job which I like and I love my team but the commute is costing so much in petrol and parking that I’d love to not have to do that, but nor do I relish the opportunity of being squished on a train in rush hour!

I’m in the North West, close to both Manchester and Liverpool.

What industry are you in?

it obviously varies enormously by industry.

it’s bollocks.

It’s an employee’s market if you want to go and work in hospitality, but in terms of e.g. admin type jobs it most definitely isn’t.

And work from home is on its way out. Over the past two years I have been looking for work and most jobs were advertised as remote, moving to highbrid in the past year or so. But the reality is that companies want their staff back in the office.

Some who are already working from home may be able to maintain that, but most new adverts are showing jobs as being office based.

Obviously there are some who have moved to wfh but they are in the minority. And even many of those who agree wfh do so on the basis the employee will have to take a salary cut.

I think there’s a real gap between jobs available and jobs people want to do. Probably big regional issues too. I work at a school and we have reasonable applications for senior posts, but struggling to recruit and retain admin and LSAs, these aren’t well paid and we’re in a really expensive part of the country, very little scope to increase the wages on these posts.

@SoggyPaper I currently work for a public transport organisation. I’m customer facing at the moment and as I said I like it but it’s quite far from where I live and the commute is getting more and more expensive. I get free/reduced travel but there are no options to get me there/back for my shifts.

I think you’re right @AlternativePerspective 😢. There’s very little local to me too.

Depends what you do. We are currently looking for sales and marketing staff. We can hardly get people to commit to an interview before confirming it will be largely WFH.
Also in NW.

If you are highly skilled and want to work just above nmw, there is lots available here- I am Midlands. Wages are crap at the moment.

More and more companies want staff in the office, hybrid is less and less. used to be 3 days office, 2 home. Now they are offering less and less hybrid.

I think that is part of the issue @Ylvamoon . I’m good, very good at my job, but it doesn’t really transfer to other industries. I have an OU Diploma but no degree or much experience, other than the role I’m in now (done for around 10 years on/off) and very basic admin (data entry, reception ).

I was a customer service trainer for my old company (also public transport) but got made redundant 5 years ago and there just aren’t any vacancies for those type of jobs now. Everyone uses consultants and it’s really hard to set yourself up with no experience/contacts.

A customer facing role is likely to be the biggest barrier to finding WFH roles, for understandable reasons. That’s generally the first area employers want to get back in (or never had WFH at all).

If you want to WFH I guess you really need to look at getting into the kind of roles that are most likely to be remote. Tech roles, for example, are often remote.

I’ve just been offered a WFH role in a tech area. There are loads of them around - but they do tend to require specific expertise of some kind or another.

Again depends on the industry we are crying out for specialists in my engineering/utilities field. Lots of safety people needed. Also electrical engineers are like gold dust. Admittedly some of the more physical engineers need to be on site but I'm a safety person and have been working from home for 2 years and no plans to go back except for occasional meetings and walk downs.

Industry dependent. I'm in tech, in the North West, so obviously there's loads of remote only jobs - remote work has been common for developers for years - and plenty of Northern developers and analysts taking remote roles at London companies with the London salary too. I'm starting my new role next week.

Anyway, the best roles are on LinkedIn and many top companies use recruiters, and don't want direct applications, so use the recruiters on there. They'll bring the best roles to you.

Loads of those roles are in the NW too.

I work at a University in the Midlands and we are also struggling to recruit (and keep!) admin staff. We are receivng very few applications compared to pre-pandemic times and the ones we do receive, the candidates are not always suitable for the role.

We are hybrid working, 3 days in the office and 2 WFH.

Op have you looked at account management roles?

It's working with a set account or number of accounts and you can transfer your people skills.

We have advertised a part time, completely flexible job working from home or occasional helping with community events three times. Can’t find anybody at all. The job is admin, sharing things on Facebook, typing minutes and things like helping to run community garden events. It doesn’t pay a huge amount at £12.50 an hour but is perfect for parents working around school.

I do lots of work in the evening snd during my toddlers nap time, when I have events like community gardening my toddler comes with me and my work are quite happy for her to. I thought we’d get loads of applications but nothing!

OP if you've been a CS Trainer in the past explore apprenticeship tutor or assessor options

I work for a large and expanding engineering company in the East Midlands. We are really struggling to get staff. In every part of the business. Manufacturing, engineering, design, finance, IT.

Office staff can work from home two days a week and we have flexitime. Wages are competitive and housing costs/cost of living is low. Excellent pension. We've got all these schemes to try and attract staff. Company car incentives, gym memberships, bikes, subsidised canteen.

Yet we still can't get enough people and we are now trying to recruit out of the UK.

Sent you a PM

If you fancy working as an SDR I have a role you might like. It's hybrid, but tons WFH almost FT. (Office is in Liverpool).

Everyone in this area is desperate for staff with any kind of skill, existing staff is massively overburdened because so many are changing jobs for better wages. At basic wages £10-12 you can do as many hours as you want, I do 2 extra shifts most weeks, the managers are very careful not to upset staff, they can’t replace us.

Customer facing roles are not going to be WFH or hybrid. If you want hybrid you’re going to have to look at a different type of job.

I’ve just been offered a new job with one day a week in the office. All the jobs I looked at said hybrid was available and it was something I discussed informally before applying. The type of job I do can’t be fully remote as there needs to be meetings with stakeholders and partners but certainly lends itself to hybrid. DH is in finance and that is hybrid. My mum is in consulting and that is hybrid. My dad has just applied for a job in the charity sector but is coming from construction (obviously office side of construction), both were hybrid. None of us are in London and my parents are in NW. In terms of admin and date entry roles, the best for those still seem to be local government and NHS because they just don’t have enough office space for all their staff, although it will slightly be dependent on role so a receptionist or a reprographics assistant is still going to be needed on site.

We are in the north and recruiting constantly lately. This is across the business. But we don’t offer wfh on anything other than an ad-hoc basis which may be part of the reason.

The issue for us is that we’re about half and half in terms of roles that can and can’t be done from home so it has been seen as unfair throughout the pandemic that the office based staff can and did wfh while others had to come in. Even though that decision was made in order to minimise contact and ensure adequate distancing to protect those who have to work on-site. So it seems more equitable to have all of us work from the office.

@potplant , Im in the NW looking or remote sales job, can I DM you for info? thanks

We’re hybrid (3 days office, 2 WFH) for most staff but customer facing and admin roles are the only ones my company (and many of our peers, we’ve discovered) isn’t offering as hybrid: it just isn’t practical when our office is open five days a week, we can’t have reception unmanned for two days or wet ink records that need filing hanging around until Tuesday because the reception and admin staff are WFH.

Where is this job?

I’m currently desperately looking for work and have had no success.. Admin/customer adviser, I have plenty of experience producing minutes etc and have done secretarial etc.

Only things are that I’ve been out of work for a number of years, I live in London area, and I am visually impaired although this shouldn’t be an issue as I use adaptive technology